It's Christmas time in the city, also Hanukkah, and Kwanza starts as Christmas finishes. I've already mentioned that as I grow older and older I lose people, things, connections. I've lost furniture, friends, family, doctors, agents (!), and all kinds of thingies and tschotschkes (sp?), including Christmas decorations. When I moved from Stratford to Toronto, everything was still intact. My children were with me then and my mother came from Winnipeg for Christmas. While we all went to church, Liz stayed home and put out every single decoration I ever had: old, new, hand-made, sentimental, ragged and loved. We came home, not to a wonderland but to a jumble of Xmases Past and Present. Liz greeted us:

"Merry Kitchmas, everyone!"

After that, I started downsizing. By the time I moved north to a lake in Muskoka, about 12 years later, my Christmas collection was reduced to a clutch of bells I hung on the front door. By that time no one was with me and I went away for Christmas, to one or another of my children, all grown with homes of their own. That's how it goes.

I suppose I should say something funny here, but I can't think of anything.